Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Lady from Louisiana Blu-ray Movie Review

Betting on the bayou.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 27, 2013

In my home state we’re besieged with print and broadcast advertising that tells us “The Oregon Lottery does good things”. If you live in a state with its own lottery, chances are you’re inundated with much the same advertising, designed to accentuate the fact that lotteries do more than simply create instant millionaires. State lotteries like to play up the winners, of course, feeding the common dream of striking it rich by correctly choosing six or so numbers, but for anyone who’s ever played a lottery (this reviewer included), it soon becomes obvious just how difficult it is to even get a couple of numbers right. And that points up what is the real goal of these games of chance—to raise (usually much needed) funds for state programs. There’s a reason that the old adage goes “don’t bet against the house”, and in this particular case, the state is the house, and the state usually ends up winning long before any individual citizen does. Lotteries have become insanely popular over the past couple of decades, including the huge interstate pools like Powerball and Megamillions. But hidden in the bylaws of these gargantuan affairs are profit sharing deals where each of the participant states gets their own cut of the pie. In other words, the states aren’t offering these lotteries from purely altruistic motives. Lady from Louisiana takes us back to a seemingly more innocent time, a post-antebellum era when Southern Belles batted their lengthy eyelashes and stalwart males always did the right thing. Except for when they didn’t. In this case, corruption runs rampant in a New Orleans lottery, and ever trusty hero John Wayne is called in to clean up the shenanigans. In the process, he of course falls in love, but there’s also a rather unexpected late development that seems to both presage both a certain weather event in Back to the Future as well as a real life weather event called Hurricane Katrina.

Lady from Louisiana is a rather breezy entry in the John Wayne canon, one that’s played for laughs at least as much as for action or drama. The comedic element is on display right off the bat when we see an old paddlewheel moving down the Mississippi, and then see two lovers in a pretty serious clinch on the back of the boat. As they finally end their passionate kiss, the man asks the woman what her name is. This is a 1941 family film? Shades of the “love generation”’s John and Mary. The two barely have time to almost introduce themselves before the boat docks and it’s revealed, in one of those very convenient filmic coincidences, that the man—stalwart attorney John Reynolds (John Wayne)—has been brought to town by a meddling biddy who wants him to bring down the lottery running father of the beautiful young woman, Julie Mirbeau (Ona Munson).

While Lady from Louisiana therefore has a well worn set up of lovers kept apart by circumstance, the film goes off on a number of rather unexpected, even bizarre, tangents, some of them due to the rather large and colorful cast. The meddlesome biddy is Blanche Brunot (Helen Westley), who is irascible but basically lovable as she insists that the fetid corruption destroying New Orleans from within must be stopped. She also has the rather grandiosely named Agamemnon (unfortunately there’s no available data on who plays this role, and I don’t recognize the actor), an African American servant who provides comedy relief with little bits like when he freaks out hearing a voice coming out of the “talking machine” (otherwise known as a telephone to you modern folk). On the distaff side of things, Julie is surrounded not just by her father, General Mirbeau (Henry Stephenson), but a would be beau, the devious Blackie Williams (Ray Middleton). Blackie seems oddly sanguine about Julie’s attraction toward John, but his true motives become clear as the film moves along. (Julie has her own servant, played by future star Dorothy Dandridge, here shunted to the background but still displaying the beauty and grace that might have made her a sort of follow up to Lena Horne had she been offered better parts.)

Julie is of course under the impression that the lottery is all about raising funds to help indigent children, unaware that Blackie runs several rackets which include threatening winners with bodily harm if they don’t “reinvest” in various gambling enterprises and also demanding protection money from local businesses. John meanwhile has seen his personal currency rise to where he’s a city attorney charged with cleaning up the burgeoning lottery scandals. When he discovers his best friend, a recent lottery winner, dead, he is on a personal mission. Julie also experiences a death in her family, unaware that Blackie’s behind it, and that sets the two erstwhile lovers out on a headlong conflict which ultimately sees a court case, which John loses when Julie offers the judge a rather sizable check. This is a rather fascinating development for a film which is curiously ambivalent about at least a couple of characters’ morality.

In fact quite a bit of Lady from Louisiana plays out in shades of gray. The film is rather surprisingly ribald at times (there are several “working girls” in one of the film’s many subplots). On the other hand, Blackie’s machinations are also fairly despicable, free from much nuance, to the point where, in the film’s quasi-disaster film finale, he puts hordes of people at risk (including his erstwhile fiancée Julie) in order to save his own hide. Lightning strikes and broken levees lead to another kind of odd detour for this film, finally giving Wayne the chance to spring into fist fighting heroics and save the day. The film wraps up rather weirdly fast after this exciting if typically small scale Republic special effects fest, with a callback to the opening question Wayne posed to Munson.

Speaking of Munson, one wonders if Republic’s would be impresario Herbert J. Yates wanted to trade in on the actress’ then fairly recent notoriety for having played thinly veiled prostitute (with a heart of gold of course) Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind. That role may have colored public perceptions at least slightly to the point where Munson was seen as morally questionable, something that’s certainly part and parcel of her role in this film. Unlike Belle, however, Julie gets her man, as if there had ever been much doubt.

Lady from Louisiana Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Lady from Louisiana is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.36:1. Perhaps surprisingly given the vintage of this release, this is one of the nicest looking Republic catalog titles we've seen from Olive. The elements are in very good condition, with only the most minor of damage to report, most of it absolutely negligible. Contrast is very strong throughout the presentation, and the image is stable and clear, within the confines of the era of film. (Several of Munson's close-ups are filtered, giving them an intentionally softer look.) There is quite a bit of stock footage used, first in some establishing shots of New Orleans and, later, during the big storm sequence, and that looks noticeably more ragged than the bulk of this enterprise.

Lady from Louisiana Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Much like the video quality, Lady from Louisiana's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track has surprisingly little damage, with none of the typical noticeable distortion in the opening credits' music. Dialogue and the film's many sound effects (especially in the big storm finale) are delivered with very good fidelity, with only expected hiss and a bit of high end clipping.

Lady from Louisiana Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Lady from Louisiana Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The comedy is broad and the melodrama fairly turgid at times in Lady from Louisiana, but the film is still rather unexpectedly charming and entertaining most of the time. It's yet another kind of odd role for Wayne (Republic seemed to really want Wayne to "grow up" to be an attorney considering how often they gave him roles like this), and it's also a rare chance to see Munson in a leading role. However, it's probably the supporting cast here that provides the most interest, with great little turns by the likes of Stephenson, Westley and Middleton. The quasi-disaster film finale is kind of giddily low rent (the miniature of the riverboat "rescuing" the stranded citizens has to be seen to be believed, and maybe not even then), and there's also a really peculiar lack of clear cut divisions between good and evil (especially with regard to Julie, who does some fairly underhanded things and then just kind of doesn't anymore). This Blu-ray offers rather nice looking video and sounding audio and comes Recommended.